[VAC] Olympian Heater

[Gary Quamen <gquamen@xxxxxxxx>]

To those interested in Olympian heaters:

I recently got an Olympian 6100A catalytic heater and thought I'd share 
some information with you.

I bought it through Campers Choice.  The reason I did that was 
because it was cheapest (one of my favorite things) and they did not 
charge sales tax or shipping.  The price (regular) was $275.34 as opposed 
to $329.00 (regular price) / $296.10 (President's Club price) at Camping 
World plus sales tax (CA = 8.25%) and shipping (UPS = $8.95 for 10 lbs < 
20 lbs). The heater is listed at 13 lbs.  As I recall, Camping World had 
the heater on sale last summer for about the same price as Camper's 
Choice, but that didn't do me much good in November.

I also bought the little legs ($9.12 at CC), ($11.99 / $10.79 at CW).  
The legs make the heater extremely stable, lean it back a little bit, and 
allow me to point it in any direction.

In order to make it easy on myself (a never ending chore) I opted to use 
the existing gas supply to my Suburban furnace.  I simply disconnected 
and plugged the line to the furnace at the shutoff cock and connected the 
gas hose in it's place.  I hose-clamped the remaining short copper line 
that was left connected to the furnace and the new hose together for 
stability.  Then I ran the hose over the Suburban to the corner of the 
cabinet near the entry-way and drilled a hole large enough to get the 
hose through near the floor.  I used a 7 foot hose which left me enough 
to turn the heater any way that's needed.  I did add some fittings to 
re-orient the connection to the heater.  Personal preference.  When not 
in use I bungee-cord the heater to the cabinet side.

Air Supply (Quote from the Olympian instructions):

"The heater consumes air from the room in which it is installed.  To 
assure complete combustion, an adequate fresh air supply to the room is 
necessary.  It is good practice to have at least two openings, one high 
and one low.  The room must have at least one square inch of FREE AIR 
opening per 1,000 Btu/hr input to the heater with rooms of average 
tightness.  If the room is tightly sealed or insulated so that natural 
infiltration is low, additional ventilation is required.  At least 7 
square inches are recommended for Model 6100."

In my case, I believe that the vent opening under the refrigerator is 
much more than adequate to provide inlet air (low) and a roof vent(s) 
provides the second opening (high).

The unit can also be wall mounted and a template and instrucions are 
provided along with some screws and inserts.  It can be mounted sideways 
too, which I didn't know.

This is a very nice piece of equipment in my opinion.

Last but not least, this unit puts out some SERIOUS heat.  The directions 
say you must start-up on the high setting for 10 minutes to completely 
ignite the pad.  After that, I have only run it at low.  Over 
Thanksgiving we camped where it had been raining and was in the middle 
30's at night with heavy dew and LOW (3200 Btu) was plenty to keep warm 
all night.  The humidity was negligable, only a little fog on the lower 
1/4 of the windows in the AM.  HIGH is 5800 Btu - MED is in between 
somewhere (4500?...I figured that out MYSELF!)).

Hope this helps - didn't intend to write a book here,

GQ '67 Safari